‘Uncharted’ Movie Picks Up Oscar Winner Mark Boal to Write Screenplay

Mark Boal (The Hurt Locker; Zero Dark Thirty) has made quite a career for himself despite having very few credits to his name. And now the Oscar winner for Best Original Screenplay has now been hired to take a stab at Uncharted, the adaptation of the acclaimed video game by Naughty Dog. Will this be the video game movie to end the long running streak of terrible adaptations?

Gamers have been yearning for a movie adaptation of their favorite titles and have been given the likes the campy Street Fighter, the goofy Super Mario Bros., and the over-the-top Resident Evil series. Perhaps the missing ingredient to the puzzle has been a good writer. I rather enjoyed The Hurt Locker, and was happy to see it win over James Cameron’s Avatar. There are some favorable moments of tension on screen while also providing some charm to the main character portrayed by Jeremy Renner.

Having been in production Hell for quite some time, Uncharted, even Academy Award nominated director David O. Russell (The Fighter; American Hustle; Silver Linings Playbook) was attached to direct at one point after he had written a screenplay treatment. Thomas Dean Donnelly, Joshua Oppenheimer, and Cormac and Marianne Wibberley have also taken a stab at the script.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, a fan of the franchise, Boal has been hired on to do a three-week “production polish” of the screenplay, most recently written David Guggenheim (Safe House). His previous work leans more toward the grounded realism of modern war, so I will be interested to see this writer stretch his talent to something more to the akin of a Indiana Jones type action-adventure.

For the uninitiated, here is the plot synopsis from Naughty Dog of Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune:

A 400-year-old clue in the coffin of Sir Francis Drake sets Nathan Drake on an exploration for the fabled treasure of El Dorado, leading to the discovery of a forgotten island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

The search turns deadly when Drake becomes stranded on the island and hunted by mercenaries. Outnumbered and outgunned, Drake and his companions must fight to survive as they begin to unravel the terrible secrets hidden on the Island.

Directed by Seth Gordon, Uncharted is expected to land in theaters in 2016. The movie is set to shoot early next year according to Zap2It.